Harry Potter and the Unicorn's Curse
by Really Frozen Phoenix
Summary: It’s the end of sixth year at Hogwarts for Harry Potter and he can safely say that it’s been the most relaxed year despite the war with Lord Voldemort. Calm doesn’t last long, however, and he knows that the storm is on it’s way. HP/femBZ. AU.


**Harry Potter and the Unicorn's Curse**

**Summary:** It's the end of sixth year at Hogwarts for Harry Potter and he can safely say that it's been the most relaxed despite the war of Lord Voldemort. Calm doesn't last long, however, and the storm is on it's way. HP/femBZ. AU.

**Disclaimer:** I lay no claim to the world of Harry Potter and make no profit off of it's amazing goodness. Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling and to a lesser extent to Bloomsbury and Scholastic.

Keep in mind that in this universe, Ginny and Harry didn't hook up (which, ironically enough, doesn't change HPB in the slightest).

Prologue

Things at Hogwarts have been kind of peaceful the last few weeks and Harry was fully ready to take advantage of it. Malfoy was nothing more than a pitiful annoyance and there were no crazy Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers out to get him—unless Tonks performed an unlikely switch to the dark side in the past year.

He got up from his bed on the morning of Saturday, May 25th and started getting ready for a nice weekend free of homework. Sixth year was mostly over and Harry had finally learned the value of doing his homework on time and the value of actually reading his textbooks.

He decided to stop worrying about Voldemort and concentrate a bit more on his schoolwork. After all, it's not like he ever trained to fight Voldemort before, right? Previously, all of his energy went into worrying and grouching about it. Might as well put all that energy into something positive like studying and ensuring that he had a good job after school. Yes, he studied Defense like crazy but that was just because the subject fascinated him. Unsurprisingly, his grades shot up from Acceptable and Exceeds Expectations to mostly Outstanding. Who knew that actually paying attention and working in class got such good results? Apparently, getting perfect grades really wasn't that hard in an underachieving school like Hogwarts that valued the house cup more than they did student's grades. Harry's grades were always good in elementary school so why did he ever stop trying academically when he came to Hogwarts?

Thanks to this, he wasn't even worried about the final exams that were coming up shortly. He was worry free for the first time in his life. But, as he knew, nothing good ever lasts forever and he was expecting something to go down.

The late breakfast was nothing out of the ordinary and the quick lunch a few hours later was practically routine. At dinner, however, something changed.

Harry was ready with a good insult to Malfoy's masculinity and waited the blonde idiot to swagger up in his usual manner but for the first time Malfoy disappointed. Harry watched the elitist shit walk by him with a gleeful, yet distracted look on his pointed face. A happy Malfoy usually meant that someone was in trouble. Oh well, he thought, Harry was keeping his nose clean this year and broke no rules but those of curfew so it couldn't be him.

He continued watching him covertly all through dinner and eventually tracked the person the Malfoy was secretly staring at. Draco Malfoy was sneaking glances between the rafters where the owls came from in the morning and Blaise Zabini, a stunningly beautiful, black haired girl from Slytherin. Blaise was one of the few Slytherins, along with he friends Daphne Greengrass and Tracy Davis, who never really showed much interest in picking fights with Harry or other Gryffindors. They mostly kept to themselves and stuck to the top of the class grade-wise. Zabini had green eyes of a darker shade than his and long black hair but those were the only similarities. She was a bit cold and distant while Harry considered himself to be outgoing (at least in the last year). But that was alright; if the rumors of the fate of all her fathers were true then it must have been hard growing up.

Blaise Zabini came from a famous pureblood family that was even more famous for remaining strong and neutral all throughout the war with Voldemort. Now though, the family was much weaker because of the mysterious deaths of all six of Blaise's mother's husbands and the mysterious deaths of a few other key members of the family. Personally, Harry thought that it was just asking for trouble. He knew Voldemort very well and could safely say that it wasn't too long before he was going to start solving disputes from the last war and getting back into the game.

So the question was what could Malfoy want with the girl? He briefly considered something romantic but immediately discounted that. Malfoy wouldn't go for her because his father would disapprove. Harry kept his eyes on the two and placed his wand in his sleeve for easy access in case anything were to happen. He wouldn't put it past the junior Death Eater to start something.

When the beautiful girl got up (alone, he noticed with curiosity) after finishing dinner, Harry grabbed a roll from his plate and said goodbye to his friends, thinking he might as well follow Zabini to make sure nothing happened. It wasn't really his responsibility but foiling Malfoy's badly laid out plans was always a sure way to have fun.

He met Dumbledore's eyes at the teacher's table and tried to broadcast his thoughts that something suspicious was going on. He walked casually to the door out of the great hall at the same time as Zabini walked up to it and had the perfect view of the owl once it came flying quickly. Time seemed to slow down for Harry as he saw her turn around with a fearful look in her eyes. It took him only a moment to notice the dark aura of the package the owl was carrying and another moment to see a spell flying at the package from the Slytherin table.

There was a crunching sound and—what Harry now realized was a glass globe—shattered, letting forth a silver liquid. It was too late for a shielding spell so he relied on reflex and jumped the last few feet to the side and knocked Zabini to the ground with a hand. He opened his mouth and raised his wand to cast a protective charm but knew that it was too late.

The silver liquid splashed all over his face, getting into his mouth and his open eyes. He became dizzy immediately and swayed on his feet. The last thing he heard was a piercing shriek, "HARRYYYYYYYYY…."

And then the pain came. Pain that put the Cruciatus to shame. It was the first time that Harry welcomed unconsciousness with such eagerness.

8888

The transition between being asleep and being awake was practically gone. One second he was asleep, and the next he was completely awake and aware of his surroundings. He didn't dare move because of the pain and because he didn't want to warn anyone of being awake. He could hear breathing just a couple of feet away so he forced himself to calm down and think.

Harry quickly took stock of his memories and the situation he was in. He remembered knocking Blaise Zabini out of the way of the cursed silver liquid and remembered getting sprayed by it instead. This, ironically enough, made him calm down slightly. Chances were that he was simply in the hospital wing of Hogwarts or that he was in St. Mungo's Hospital. The smell of disinfectant seemed to support that theory. Voldemort probably threw you into a dungeon cell if you were injured rather than put you in a medical bay.

Harry let out a sigh of relief and opened his eyes. What greeted him was a head of dark hair and dark forest green eyes. "Zabini…" he rasped and trailed off. Speaking was just as painful as all other movements apparently. The pain he was feeling in his body was a constantly sharp pain everywhere that sharpened greatly at any movement. Even breathing hurt.

"Potter," she breathed out softly, "how are you feeling?"

"Just jolly, thank you." He said through gritted teeth as he looked around the place. It appeared that this was the Hogwarts infirmary.

She huffed in annoyance but let the sarcasm slide. "You've been out for a week after that stunt you pulled."

Harry narrowed his eyes at that. A week? He'd never stayed down for that long. His magic usually speeded up recovery until he woke up after a day at most. That must've been one hell of a potion or curse…

"Don't you want to know what happened?" she asked after it became apparent that he wasn't about to ask. Harry was tempted to roll his eyes if he didn't know that it would hurt.

"It seems like you're intent on telling me as it is." he replied, "I don't see why I should ask."

"Fine! Be that way, you arrogant prick." She hissed at him. 'Wow, moody much?' He thought.

"Arrogant?" he repeated the word, "Where did that one come from? I thought Snape was the only one delusional enough to imagine that I'm arrogant."

He watched Zabini stare at him silently for what seemed like hours before she finally exploded, "What the hell gave you the right to jump in front of that thing, you idiot?! What the hell gives you the right to do that? What if it turned out to be harmless? Or what if it killed you?!"

Harry would've enjoyed her moment of loss of control but he was too tired to care. "I'm not as much of an idiot as people make me out to be, you know. I didn't just master the Hogwarts curriculum for DADA, I mastered Defense Against the Dark Arts well enough to gain a Mastery. That liquid was dark, whatever it was. Anyone could've sensed that. Although it does seem a bit familiar…did the healers identify it?"

"They didn't need to." Zabini said slowly as she calmed down and Harry noticed that she didn't quite meet his eyes. "Headmaster Dumbledore identified it easily enough."

"Oh, he did? Well no surprises there. The man might be old and crazy like a fox but he sure as hell knows his Dark Arts and Transfiguration. So what was it anyway?" he asked suspiciously. He had a feeling that this was bad, very bad.

"Well…it was blood." Was the vague answer.

It took Harry only a few seconds to understand what she was getting at. There were no animals with silver blood, except for one. And blood was generally very resistant to magic but very conductive of it. Resistant in the sense that it couldn't hold magic very well, but conductive in the sense that you could pass magic through it like people did in rituals. So the blood was probably cursed from the beginning…his eyes widened at the conclusion.

"That's impossible!" he shouted, well, shouted as much as he could in his condition. "I thought even Voldemort wouldn't stoop this low! Drink it in a faux body maybe, but never curse somebody else with it. That bastard! And he was going to do that to _you_ over some vendetta?!"

"So you know what it was? And how do you know that it was You-know-who?" she asked slowly, surprised that he figured it out.

"Yeah, I'm not that stupid. Malfoy couldn't come up with this and couldn't get the blood. Stupid unicorns with their stupid blood. I don't get people's fascination with them. They're just horses with cursed blood that can sense purity and a stupid overpriced horn. Purity isn't even an important quality. They're about as light as dementors." He shut his eyes and clenched them tight as his situation finally sank in. "GOD FUCKING DAMMIT! What more could go wrong?!"

Once he opened his eyes he saw that Zabini looked down again.

"Did something else happen, Zabini?" he asked tiredly.

Instead of answering, she reached into a pocket and took out a handheld mirror. She then brought it to Harry's face seeing as he didn't look like he was going to take it himself. Harry looked into the mirror inquisitively and almost fainted from what greeted him. His eyes and the area around them…The eyes were silver and glazed-looking and the surrounding skin was silvery white, as if scarred. The rest of his face also looked to be discolored in a similar way, with random parts being silver-white and the others normal skin.

"What…the bloody hell…is…that?" he breathed out in shock.

"The healers said that it was a reaction of your skin to so much Unicorn blood. It reacted a bit like an acidic substance and stained your skin. It reacted with your scar and somehow got rid of the curse on it. Apparently the stains are harmless scars now but they couldn't remove any of them."

Harry took a second look into the mirror and noticed that his usual lightning bolt scar was nowhere to be seen. Huh, well you win some you lose some, right? He reminded himself to check if the connection still existed between Voldemort and him.

"Great, more scars…as if being infected isn't enough."

"Infected?" Zabini asked hesitantly with her green eyes guarded.

"Yeah, infected, Unicorn Blood is some serious dark magic. People think that it's just unwillingly given blood that's cursed but that's complete bullshit."

"But they can fix it, can't they?"

"Fix what?" Harry asked in annoyance. He almost got used to the pain by now and was barely paying attention to it.

"Can they get rid of the curse?" she asked naively.

"I would imagine that they cannot. 'Thy drinker of the cursed blood, cometh thou back from grievous wounds, but cursed be thou for all eternity, cursed to wonder the Earth with suffering and pain as thine only companion.'" He quoted.

"Who said that?" Zabini asked quietly.

"Merlin himself, if you believe in the Merlin diaries."

"What the fuck did Merlin know about these things. He's just some overestimated wizard from the stupid ages!" she yelled in return. "I'm sure that something can be done to help you now with all the years of research." Again, very moody.

"Merlin knew very well what he was doing in this case."

"Doing? What are you talking about?"

"Merlin, in all his esteemed genius, placed a curse on the Unicorn bloodline. Not so much a curse that affects them, but a curse that is carried in their blood like a poison for the drinker. And with the small populations of the unicorns I'm sure that quite a bit of inbreeding took place, probably just strengthening the curse."

"How do you know all of this?" she asked sadly.

"The Potters are the official keepers of the Diary of Merlin, for what it's worth. We're supposed to keep it locked until the world is ready to see it. I've read it, obviously."

"Shouldn't you be keeping information like that secret, especially from people like me?"

"Whatever for? There is nothing truly innovational in there. No powerful spells. No secret magical theory that could destroy the world if in the wrong hands. You were right when you said that he is severely overestimated. It's just like stories of men who were particularly tall in the middle ages; it doesn't really matter to us since humans in general were much shorter back then and so these people must've been barely average in height. It's the same with Merlin. He was just powerful in comparison to wizards and witches of the past who could barely control their magic because magical foci were so hard to make. Except for the curse, he really achieved nothing special. And even that I think was a fluke."

"But it's been more than a thousand years since his time. Maybe this curse can be removed now."

"And did the healers say that it could be removed?"

"Well, no but-"

"British Magical Law Enforcement might be worthless but St. Mungo's has one of the best curse damage and potion damage wards in the whole world. Unicorn's blood is just beyond our capacity to deal with."

"You can't just give up!" she lost her temper again.

"Excuse me?" he burst out, "I might be stubborn but even I know when to leave well enough alone."

"No you don't!" she surprised Harry by actually yelling. "You're supposed to be the great hero. You're supposed to do the impossible. You're supposed to beat this thing." She exclaimed desperately with flailing arms. Harry looked at her closely for the first time and saw just how disturbed she was by this. Completely out of character, although to be fair he couldn't really say that he knew her all too well.

"I don't see how this affects you in any way, Zabini." He said after a bit of contemplation, "I'll stay here in this ward for a few days, then I'll leave and finish my Hogwarts education, then I'll deal with Voldemort when the bastard halfblood finally appears, and then I'll go on with the rest of my fucking eternity and _you_'ll never have to fucking see me **again**." The little impromptu speech started out calmly but ended with Harry practically yelling at her. The shock was starting to hit. He couldn't be cursed with unicorn blood! He was the boy-who-lived!

Zabini looked a little sad for a moment before she jumped out of her chair and surprised Harry but latching on to him like nobody ever did. At first he was so surprised at the warm hug that he didn't even react to the pain it caused him, only at first though. "Ow, what's wrong with you, woman?! You're more temperamental than a python on marijuana!" she shot off of him the second he flinched and shouted at her and gushed, actually gushed at him, "Oh, I'm so sorry. The healers said that you shouldn't be in pain when you woke up and I just didn't know. I'm sorry--"

"Stop apologizing, Zabini. It doesn't suit you." He said after he got over the pain. When she hugged him, it felt like his chest was on fire. And not in that 'oh my heart is all a flutter' kind of a way. It felt like that boa constrictor from the London Zoo had decided to crush him and then bite him for good measure. Was the curse really this bad?

"A python on marijuana?" she asked after a long pause. "Please tell me that you didn't actually try that…"

"I might've experimented a bit…"

"Blaise."

Harry just stared blankly at her. "Pardon?" he asked.

"My name is Blaise, Potter."

"I'm well aware of that, thank you."

"Call me Blaise and not Zabini, you knucklehead." She practically yelled.

Harry looked at her strangely. Sure he was just being difficult for amusement but she was too easy to rile up at the moment. He was a bit surprised at the request, though. And was knucklehead really the best she could come up with?

"Alright, I can do that…Blaise." The name felt weird on his tongue. Weird in a good sort of way. The way her normally expressionless lips quirked into a smile when he said her name had nothing to do with it, nope, nothing at all.

"Thanks, Potter." She said quietly with that same smile.

"And you may call me Harry if you insist on such pleasantries." He continued. Just as he predicted, her smile grew even wider, radiant almost, and it made him a bit happy to know that he caused that. "So what is it that you're doing here exactly? Shouldn't you be taking the Transfiguration exam right about now?"

At first she looked a bit hesitant to answer but then she—Blaise, he reminded himself—got a funny look on her face and gave a quick glance around the room. "How the hell did you know what time it was? I mean, I get how you'd know what day it is since I told you that you've been out for a week. But there aren't any clocks in here and—" she took his hand from under the covers and checked his wrist, surprising him with her forwardness, "—you don't have a watch either…" she continued with annoyance.

Harry would've said something along the lines of 'it's elementary, Dr. Watson' but was sure that the reference would go over her little pureblood head and be completely lost on her. So instead he settled for a straight answer. "I saw you watch when it was uncovered briefly when you were flailing your arms so lady-like."

"I did _not_ flail my arms!" she exclaimed indignantly.

"I'm afraid you did, Ms Zabini." He replied with a smirk.

"Zabinis do not flail or do any such demeaning and unnecessary action. We are a proud family with proud traditions. It's completely out of the question, therefore I'm right and you're wrong." She argued.

Harry just kept smirking but changed the subject anyway. "So how did you convince Professor Kitty to let you off from the exam?"

"Professor Kitty?" she asked with a snicker. An actual snicker that definitely suited her.

"It's not like she's here to say anything…"

"True. Anyway, she didn't let me off of the exam. She's just going to have me take a different version later so that I can come here instead. I wanted to be here when you woke up."

Harry didn't say anything to that. There was just nothing to say, he was touched both at the deputy Headmistress and at a random stranger like Blaise for the care they showed. He knew how strict McGonagall was and he was touched that she allowed Blaise to remain here through the exams.

"Thank you." He said after a while, "I know that I might seem oblivious and ungrateful but thank you for staying here while I was out of it. God knows Hermione would never miss an exam to stay with me and she's too busy grouching over mindless details right now to even be my friend. I barely even know you and you care more. And Ron is about as sensitive as a doorknob so having him here would probably suck worse than having Malfoy here. So thanks."

At first Harry thought that he said something wrong because her pretty green eyes started misting over and she looked like she was about to cry and he hated crying women of any sort. "I'm supposed to be the one thanking you here, you know." She said with a choked voice. Then she let out a sob and Harry prepared himself mentally for the flying tackle that usually came after. He was pleasantly surprised when she gently rapped her arms around his middle and leaned on his lying form. "I'm the one who should be thanking you for what you did. You saved me from something I can't even imagine. I know that you probably wouldn't have done it if you knew that it was Unicorn's blood but thank you anyway. It means a lot to me. I'm sorry that this happened."

She let out another sob and left the room in a quick stride. Harry didn't know what to say so he just let her leave.

"I would've done it even if I knew what it was...Blaise." He whispered to himself quietly, not knowing that she heard him. Not knowing that another smile spread across her pale lips and that her tears slowed a little.

And despite the pain that stayed in his body through the night, he slept well for the first time in his life. There really was some good left in the world. Yes, he knew that he didn't really accept what happened to him yet and he was sure that the full shock would hit him tomorrow. But meanwhile, Harry would enjoy the night.

End of Prologue

AN- it's completely experimental and I barely have a plan for it so tell me what you think of this thing. I spend time on it off and on so it might sound a little disjointed. Question is, would you like to see more of this story or is it something that you'd just pass over? Leave some reviews and tell me what you think.


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